NSA is more than just a spy network, it’s global fascism

Patrick Henningsen is a writer, investigative journalist, and filmmaker and founder of the news website 21stCentury Wire.com. He has appeared on RT news and has also written for the Guardian.co.uk, GlobalResearch.ca, and Infowars.com. He is currently investigating issues on location in the Middle East and in Southern Europe. Patrick is a graduate of California State University at San Luis Obispo.

Despite the size and scope of Edward Snowden's NSA whistleblowing, there's little sign of Washington DC changing its practices, and even less of an indication that any of its European allies will actually hold it to account.

Germany Flip-Flops

Germany’s change of direction on this issue reveals a lot about
the scale of the problem. Angela Merkel’s initial public response
seemed to be that of outrage. "We are no longer in the cold
war," said Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert. "If
it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European
Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we
will clearly say that bugging friends is
unacceptable"(Guardian July 1, 2013).

Merkel’s public façade didn’t hold up for long after Snowden
revealed in Der Spiegel magazine only days later that the US and
Germany were in fact partnering in the global spy network.
“They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other
Western states”, the German magazine quotes Snowden as
saying, adding that the NSA has a Foreign Affairs Directorate
which is responsible for cooperation with other countries (RT
July 8, 2013). The Der Spiegel report also indicated how German
Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)
and NSA work together.

The embarrassment of this Snowden bombshell seemed to force
Germany down a notch, with Merkel opting for a new policy of
appeasement instead. So was the initial rift between the US and
Germany mere political theatre?

Merkel told Die Zeit that there was "a need to discuss the
balance between privacy and security, but protection against
terrorism was not possible without the option of electronic
surveillance”. She then added, "(I want) the necessary
discussions with the United States to be conducted in the spirit
which, despite the many justified questions, never forgets that
America has been our most loyal ally over the decades and still
is" (Reuters July 10, 2013).

But it’s Merkel’s last statement which indicates that she may be
just as out of touch with public opinion as the culture of denial
which still dominates Washington DC. "For me, there is no
comparison at all between the state security (Stasi) of the GDR
and the work of intelligence services in democratic states,"
Merkel told Die Zeit (Reuters July 10, 2013). Incredible.

No real accountability

Putting the overall theme of government abuse of power into
perspective, this week provided a solid example of what should
happen in an advanced civilized democracy. Luxembourg’s
long-serving Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced his
resignation this week over a spying scandal involving illegal
phone-taps, alongside a number other highly corrupt activities.

In normal times, what happened in Luxembourg should also happen
in other countries like the US, or Great Britain - but these are
far from normal times. What passes for normal in this bizarre
epoch is anyone’s guess, and the same goes for what is deemed to
be ‘legal’, especially in the United States.

Snowden’s revelations should have been a watershed moment, but
instead in 2013, there appears to be no parliamentary controls to
regulate the practice of warrantless digital surveillance and
data theft on the part of government agencies, and even less
chance of justice in the courts, where adjudicators have been
rendered impotent to enforce the law which have been buried under
an avalanche of emergency war-time edicts and executive orders.

Well before the Snowden affair this year, Germany effectively
cleared the legal path for one of the corporations within the NSA
collective. Through the use of administrative courts and the EU,
the Administrative Court of Schleswig, Germany upheld two
decisions on February 14th, 2013 which ruled that German data
protection laws do not apply to data processing by Facebook (file
numbers 8 B 60/12 and 8 B 61/1).These controversial judicial
procedure were initiated by Facebook Inc. (USA) and by Facebook
Ltd. (Ireland, EU), and reversed a previous order by the
Independent State Center for Data Protection of
Schleswig-Holstein (ULD) which had ruled to allow users to sign
in on Facebook using a pseudonym and to unblock those
user-accounts that had been blocked due to the users not using
their real name and personal data. At the time this was seen as a
victory for Facebook the corporation – when in fact it was really
a victory for the NSA - who harvests its data from Facebook.

NSA and GCHQ: A Joint Venture

Based on these latest Snowden leaks, we’ve learned more about the
true nature of America’s NSA and Britain’s GCHQ partnership in
this international spy network, sharing their data and
communications. Through the UK Government’s Communications
Headquarters known as TEMPORA, the British agency is able to tap
over 200 fiber optic cables landing in the UK, saving everything
- up to 27 petabytes a day, which are then parsed out to 300 GCHQ
analysts and 250 NSA colleagues who then sift through it.

Over a decade of Patriot Acts, FISA laws and Wikileaks cables has
left Americans and Europeans alike in a precarious state akin to
Stockholm Syndrome, where their love of digital communications
almost trumps their concerns for privacy. This same ambiguity has
been echoed by Obama and Merkel, who both claim that protection
against terrorism is not possible without the option of
electronic surveillance. But the narrative which was originally
framed around Washington’s invasion of its citizens’ privacy has
since gone international. It’s now about governments partnering
with each other - and with corporations, in the largest global
digital dragnet imaginable.

The extent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) overseas
spying in Europe has stunned the European public for sure, and
appears to have rattled the political classes in Germany and
Brussels – but only for now.

According to Edward Snowden’s revelations in the German magazine
Der Spiegel last week, the NSA snoops through approximately 20-60
million German phone connections, and 10 million internet data
sets a day. According to the Snowden report, all in all, the NSA
combs through around half a billion German phone calls, emails
and text messages on a monthly basis.

To add insult to injury, it’s been said the US intelligence
regards Germany as a “third class partner”, on par with
the likes of China and Iraq, making them fair game for NSA
targeting. It’s not just Berlin, as the NSA are also said to have
bugged EU diplomatic offices and gained access to EU internal
computer networks.

So where is the crisis of international diplomacy between the US
and Europe? Under normal circumstances, this might morph into a
major diplomatic crisis pitting the EU members on one side and
the US on the other – but alas, these are not really normal
times. Germany and the EU came out swinging, well, sort of.

President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz hit out
immediately stating:

“If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely
serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US
relations”.

Brussels immediately passed a non-binding resolution, which said
that unless the US provided full disclosure about its email and
communications data, then two EU-US transatlantic
information-sharing deals could be revoked. Those deals are the
Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and Passenger Name
Records (PNR). Both were rammed through the EU Parliament during
the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. It seemed like
the right thing to do at the time. It gives the US Treasury carte
blanche on all European stored data on international financial
transfers, and gives US Homeland Security carte blanche on all
passenger check-ins and ticket bookings on flights.

Few believe that the EU will actually make good on their threats,
seeing the initial reaction as a mere face-saving exercise,
leading to no real action by MEPs in Brussels.

Global Data Industry: A Digital Cartel

The corporate aspect should not be underrated in terms of its
central role in the international digital data trade. Edward
Snowden’s PRISM revelations of government controlled NSA
wiretapping and data theft are nothing new, as former CIA analyst
Russell Tice prove almost a decade ago in 2005 by showing that
the NSA were engaged in unlawful and unconstitutional wiretaps on
American citizens. But the NSA cannot operate without the
partnership of these companies – all of whom have offices and
operational hubs in most foreign markets.

Herein resides the key aspect in all of this - that in order for
agencies like the NSA and GCHQ to get easy access to all of our
digital communications and data, they still need the cooperation
of corporations to do it. In the US, it’s now known what role
major ISPs and mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T play in
this equation within US borders, including the existence of
NSA-controlled SG3 collection rooms embedded within the companies
facilities. Shocking enough, but not nearly as shocking if you
consider the role of transnational corporations in enabling the
NSA access to your digital threads.

Internationally, citizens have already signed over most of their
privacy simply by using the digital services of US multinationals
like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Skype, Yahoo and others.
All of these corporation operate within a ‘profit-first’
ethical vacuum where, in many cases, they are actually charging
the NSA for the privilege of consuming their customers’
communications and data. According to the recent Snowden leaks,
the level of collusion between Microsoft Corp and the NSA is
astonishing, where Microsoft allows the NSA to skirt encryption
protocols on Outlook, Skype video and cloud services, and where
data captured by the NSA is routinely passed on to both the FBI
and the CIA (Guardian July 12, 2013).

The horrible irony here is too obvious to ignore: the US
government, through its NSA, is giving away taxpayer dollars so
these corporations can profit from handing over all of your
personal communications and data.

Such an unholy alliance between partnering governments and
transnational corporations could be defined as fascism, but the
global nature of this operation might require a new term to
define what means as a global phenomenon.

Amidst the international Snowden media circus, it’s important not
to forget that what has enabled agencies like the NSA and GCHQ to
act with impunity, is the fact that both these governments have
excelled in capitalising on a post-September 11th paranoia that
has hijacked the national consciousness in both the US and the
UK. The entire basis upon which their relentless war-time remit
has been erected can be described in three words: “War on
Terror”.

It’s already clear to the global citizenry that the US federal
government and its NSA are out of control, and should be reined
in as soon as possible in order to preserve any remaining moral
standing for a country which has exhausted nearly all of its
goodwill internationally – as well as domestically.

Judging by Washington’s stoic and unapologetic stance thus far,
goodwill doesn’t seem to be a high priority yet. Until the
problem is properly addressed, there will remain a gaping hole of
moral leadership in the international community.

What political leaders are slow the realize is that when the
goodwill has been exhausted, so has the trust, and that’s a very
slippery slope indeed.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.